


Through Taenarus, I'll Bring You Home

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dark Shiro (Voltron), Galaxy Garrison days, Implied Sexual Content, Insecurity, Kissing, Loss, M/M, Mention of wounds, Mild s2 spoilers, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9580490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Sometimes there is nothing to stop us from going to hell itself to bring back everything we love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Сквозь Тенарус, я верну тебя домой](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10177790) by [Perfect_criminal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfect_criminal/pseuds/Perfect_criminal)



> So, in my last Sheith piece, the idea of Keith as Orpheus got mentioned and needless to say my mind ran away with the idea and now we have this! Aside from the myth itself springing to my mind, I had one particular image jump to my head over it all made by @L_Strikes_art over on twitter and I will include that as part of the end notes as it may give away something of the ending scene here. For those of you who know the story, this is not quite a retelling, but rather taken as a theme of sorts. And as usual, I write these two as consenting adults. I hope you enjoy!

“What is that?” Keith mumbles from beneath the covers. Just the barest spray of dark hair bursts over the pillow, the rest of him cocooned deep within the bedsheets. Or most of them. The duvet is missing, sunk to the depths of the floor, and he idly remembers kicking it off at one point, because Shiro may as well have been a furnace in human form and all Keith had thought about was using him for warmth and fuck every last sheet that tried to convince him he was better off doing otherwise. 

But without Shiro beside him, chill has crept into the bed instead and all Keith wants to do now is ball himself up tight enough to turn the cold away from him. He relents, only slightly, when he hears Shiro move across the room, when seconds later light starts to climb across the bed, penetrating the shadow-world he had wrapped himself within. Keith slides the sheet down over his head, just enough for him to locate Shiro. 

He’s standing over by the window, clad in only a pair of loose black sweatpants, his fingers slipping through the slats of the window shade where sunlight is streaming through relentlessly. Far too bright to be called morning, though the alarm clock on the bedstand tells him it’s only a quarter past ten. 

“The bird?” Shiro asks, smiling as he looks over the balled up bit of Keith on the bed.

“Yeah. . .I haven’t heard one like it before. . .”

Shiro nods slightly, his gaze drifting back out of the open window. Their room overlooks the inner courtyard, full of desert willow with their branches loaded with light pink flowers. When a breeze cut through it, rustling the leaves and whipping up miniature dust devils into a frenzy across the earth, the fragrance of the flowers would wash deep into the room. The scent of it now has him blushing, as memory begins to stir within his body. 

Keith exhales with gratitude when Shiro starts talking again, distracting him from his would-be thoughts. 

“It’s a nightingale. You don’t typically find them around here, at least not native. Someone must be keeping one as a pet,” he muses as he leans his shoulder against the wall, arms folding over his chest and his gaze eventually finding its way back to Keith. His words come slow, sure and easy. Like Time is his to keep, and right now, there is nothing to put the hurry into his veins. “Probably the innkeeper. . .Do you like it?”

Unraveling himself a little more from the sheets, Keith rolls onto his back and shudders as the air hits his bare skin. With the window open, however, he finds that the summer’s heat is starting to take the edge off of the chill from the air conditioning. After a minute of adjusting to the temperature change, Keith shifts again, this time onto his side, where he fixes Shiro with a stare.

“It’s. . .nice.”

“But. . .?" Shiro prods, a smile starting to curve the corners of his mouth, knowing.

Keith’s lips purse slightly, flustered over having been read so easily, and then he’s exhaling again as he pulls the pillow from beneath his head and launches it right at Shiro’s head. He catches it smoothly, like so much in his life, and Keith almost wants to hate him for it but he makes it look _so damn good_. And instead of hatred bubbling hot, Keith instead feels the sear of desire as Shiro starts to laugh, as the look in his eyes darkens with thoughts of retaliation, mischief-laced and offering no apologies for what’s to come. 

The pillow finds itself back in Keith’s hands seconds later, and right behind it, Shiro comes diving in. Another breath given and Keith’s hands are pinned to the mattress. He’s left staring breathless at the image of Shiro over him, grinning like a love-struck idiot and it makes Keith think about the answer he still means to give to Shiro’s question. But he waits, as Shiro pulls one leg across his body, until he’s straddling Keith in full, with his hips low against Keith’s thighs and their fingers interlacing one after the other over the mattress. Because everything that Shiro does reminds him again that they have time and there is no need to rush through these moments.

Not yet, at least.

“But. . .?” Shiro murmurs again, the sound dragging across Keith’s lips.

Keith gives Shiro’s hands a squeeze, the breath coiling tight in his lungs. “It’s beautiful,” he whispers, “. . .but also lonely. It makes me think it’s calling out for someone. . .”

Shiro smiles, warm with understanding. His lips brush light against Keith’s mouth, his eyes searching the blue-grey staring up at him, and in a voice hushed, he begins:

“. . .yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice, -“ And as he speaks, his voice drops lower still, a whisper of a sound, slow and strained, and still his eyes hold Keith’s gaze, unwavering. “ - and still she cried, and still the world pursues. . .”

Everything in Keith’s head goes dark, lost in the grey of Shiro’s eyes, in the strange bit of sadness that sits there. And the nightingale warbles on, sweet and solemn. He exhales then slowly, carefully presses his lips against Shiro’s. Their eyes remain locked, searching endlessly, and as Shiro finally relents, accepting the kiss and all of the insecurities startled within Keith, something snaps within Keith’s chest and he suddenly remembers what it means to breathe. 

“What is that from?” Keith whispers, his voice unsteady.

“A poem,” Shiro answers, the smile coming to reclaim his lips once more. “Study enough about war and you’ll find yourself stumbling across the guy who wrote it one way or another.”

“Is there anything you don’t know?”

Laughter breaks over Shiro’s lips, rushing out warm across Keith’s skin and pulling a smile to his mouth in response. 

“Way more than you think.” He gives Keith a quick kiss before rolling away from him and settling on the edge of the bed. Before Keith can push himself up, Shiro is flopping back down, his head coming to a rest against Keith’s bare stomach. He lifts his right hand towards the ceiling, and continues, “The more I look at the sky and everything beyond it, the more I realize there’s so much I don’t know. All I can do is keep learning, and if there is something more out there, then the more knowledge I have the more I might be prepared to handle it.”

“Will it be enough?” Keith asks, quiet in the face of Shiro’s determination. For a world he is still learning, for one that has too often left him shuttered or shut down for all that he lacks. 

Shiro falls silent then, which only puts a bit more boldness into the disquiet skulking about in Keith’s core. He hates how these moments creep up on him, how he thinks he can forget but finds that they are still there, living shadows haunting him with all that his life lacks. 

The things Shiro inevitably makes up for. 

“You want to keep walking forward, right?” Shiro finally asks, though it’s hardly a question. Because they both know the answer, and if nothing else, Shiro knows Keith’s heart. “Then keep moving, and don’t look back. They won’t be able to take that away from you.”

Something bursts in his chest, bright and free as a spring breeze cutting through the grass. Keith sits up onto his forearms, chin dropping to his chest, feeling dazed but wonderfully satisfied. Ready for the world and all its offerings, like he could be fearless in the face of all its tasks, its Herculean obstacles. Shiro pulls his arm back out of its orbit and reaches over to brush his fingertips along Keith’s cheekbone. 

“I thought you wanted breakfast. . .”

“Mmm. . .” Keith hums softly as he shifts his weight and brings his hand to Shiro’s forehead. He threads his fingers through Shiro’s bangs, pushing them aside and exposing in full the deep grey of his eyes. When Shiro smiles, it has this way of settling into his gaze and putting this midsummer’s warmth right into the heart of it. It reminds Keith of the time they had sat out under the desert sky, with only the stars and a blazing bonfire for company. _Alone in the world_ had never felt so utterly complete as it had in that moment. “. . .that depends. . .”

“. . .on?”

The corners of Keith’s mouth curve, wicked and promising. Shiro tips his head, lifts an eyebrow, though Keith doesn’t miss the way his eyes go dark when their gazes meet.

“Does it include you?”

Shiro chokes on a cough then, rolling over onto his side, away from Keith’s stare and that smile that had undoubtedly put a devil’s touch to Shiro’s better thoughts of breakfast. The coughing fit slides into laughter seconds later, and defeat had never sounded so good to Keith’s ears.

“What is this – a test of my stamina?” 

Keith shrugs. “We only have a day left of leave. . .”

Chest heaving, Shiro pushes himself back up and glances behind him. But he looks marvelously undone, stripped of everything that would restrain him and given over entirely to the idea of being Keith’s and his alone, and it puts the worst ache right into Keith’s bloodstream. Flooding him with every beat of his heart, this quiet little reminder that no matter where the universe takes him, he will always have this.

“. . .and you did promise me that you would be mine for all of it.”

Shiro starts to laugh once more, the sound a full capitulation. 

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

*

Keith thinks this world might be the death of him. His entire body aches, bruised to its core and bleeding out from far too many places. Something cries havoc at the back of his mind, sending his thoughts scattering as it pounds and it pounds against his skull. An endless warcry but Keith doesn’t know if it’s to direct him against the world or to set everything inside of him to rioting.

None of it is enough to kill him, but that’s hardly where the real pain starts. 

A hundred feet before him, he can see the shadowy sweep of a Druid’s cloak and beside it a pair of dark boots walking in steady time. In the distance, a river roars deafening. Beneath him, the ground is cold and black, littered with rock, with gritty sand and nothing else. A soulless planet, emptied of everything it had once been and now serving as nothing more than a hollow reminder that everything returns to dust. 

Keith pushes himself to a knee, pain rocketing through his back with the effort. A breath cuts jagged over his lips, and from a distance too far away, he can make out the cries of the other Paladins as they continue to fight. 

_You never should have come here_.

His eyes screw shut, even as he knows it will not save him from himself. Because reality might claim something else of this situation, but for him, all he can see is the retreating figure of Shiro, so close. And having lost him twice before, Keith cannot fathom letting it happen a third, even if it means dropping into hell itself to find him. 

And this. . .this has become hell. 

He rises to his feet, gripping his sword within his right hand, his thumb brushing over the Blade of Marmora’s crest in one last plea for strength. His heart hammers. His thoughts go battle-ready clear. 

With a running start, Keith lifts his hand and takes aim at the Druid’s back.

“Haggar!” Keith screams, and as she turns to look at him, grin wide across her lips, he lets the blade fly with pinpoint accuracy. “Give him back, you fucking viper!”

The sword slices clean through the air. Haggar’s image shimmers, flickering like a lightbulb nearly spent, and then she’s gone. Nothing more than smoke on the wind, and the next thing Keith registers is a hand gripping murder-tight around his throat and the sight of Shiro picking up the fallen weapon from where it had skid across the earth. 

“Oh, how I will look forward to your song of agony, Paladin,” she murmurs against his ear.

A growl tears itself out of his throat as he wraps his hand around Haggar’s wrist, and just when he thinks the breath will leave him, he pivots sharply on his left foot and sends his right straight at her side.

He’s left with nothing but laughter chasing after her retreat. Seconds later, the sword dives into the sand before him. Haggar is standing beside Shiro again, but to Keith she may as well have been nothing more than an afterthought. All he can see is Shiro, and there is nothing warm or knowing in the gaze that meets his, only this maddened brightness sparked by thoughts of violence, of a joy that knows only devastation. 

Nothing more than a shade of the man he had once known. 

A smile slides over Shiro’s lips then as Haggar leans in and whispers to him, and Keith is reminded that death comes in many forms and too few of them are kind. Something in his heart shudders, like a bull brought to the ground as the fight bleeds out of him. 

Once more, Keith is on his knees, with a hand wrapping around the hilt of his blade. 

“Shiro!. . .Shiro. . .SHIRO!”

The name flies from his throat, voice breaking over the syllables again and again. All he knows is to push forward. All he can think of is reaching the man slipping away from him yet again. And every step he takes is agony, and every breath tries his will to live.

Every thought now infused with the scent of willow and the quiet quivering cry of a bird trapped in the desert. 

Hands suddenly circle tight around his arms, stopping his progression. Keith bucks against their hold, screams with frustration and rage. But nothing gives way, and with every second, Shiro grows farther and farther away. His image wavers like heat on the desert’s horizon. Keith can’t tell if the planet itself is to blame, a misplaced thermal vent searing the air, or if something else has started to go horribly wrong with his vision.

“Dammit, Keith, are you trying to get yourself killed?!” 

Keith’s head whips to the side, a glare leveled mercilessly at Lance. “Let me go! Shiro, he’s right there. . .he’s right. . .”

It hurts to speak, hurts to breathe. Keith struggles once more against Lance’s hold and is met yet again with defeat as his knees buckle and hit the earth. A sound tears itself loose from Keith’s throat, raw with all the pain loss can kick up inside a soul. On the next breath, he’s pushing up from the dirt. Lance’s grip bites down around him. 

“Stop it already! He’s. . .he’s. . .” Lance looks around them, lost. Something bitter stings his next words, pain flooding his eyes as he speaks. “Shiro’s gone. That. . .that wasn’t him. He never would have done something like this to you. . .”

And Shiro _is_ gone when he looks over again. There is absolutely nothing in the path before him, all traces of the Galra gone. Snuffed out of existence, and if it hadn’t been for the ache coiling around his bones and putting venom into his lungs, Keith could have told himself he had imagined it all.

“We need to regroup. . .” Lance offers, quiet and apologetic. 

But all Keith registers is the endless crashing of the river, the earth black and decayed at his feet, and the vast emptiness of the world now around him.

*

“I think maybe I should have done this sooner, but I didn’t know. . .”

It feels strange to be standing here. The room is too large, too full of expectation, and Keith can’t decide if it’s a slow sort of stifling suppressing his breath or if it’s more like a void sucking the air right out of the room and quietly suffocating him in the process. It’s overwhelming, and so much of him is screaming at him to turn back, that maybe there is another way.

But there is nothing else but this. 

He offers up a small shrug, a wistful smile weakly curving his lips. When he continues, his voice is soft, his tone solid despite the uncertainty weaving its way over his words. 

“I didn’t know how. . .I didn’t know if I would be enough, and I don’t think I really have the answers for those either. There are things that I am lacking in, a lot of them actually. I can’t offer you my past, and I don’t have the same sort of experience either.” He glances upwards, shoulders setting. “But, I do know what I want.”

Keith takes a small step forward and places his hand flat against the Black Lion’s nose. 

“And I think you want the same thing, but I can’t bring him back by myself. I’ve tried. . .we’ve all tried. . .and it’s not enough. I know that we’re going to need you.”

He leans forward, letting his forehead rest against the cool surface, and breathes out slow and measured. Something knots itself, over and over again, in his stomach. His fingers curl in, nails scratching down light against the Black Lion. 

“I haven’t gotten to have a lot of things in my life. I think the only things I really earned are the ones that I fought for until Shiro came along. And then. . .then I just got to have something. . .” Keith exhales, his eyes screwing shut. “Not because I fought for it or because I was talented or because someone wanted something more from me. I didn’t have to live up to anything for him. I just had to live. . .”

He hears the waver in his voice and stops talking altogether, resting silent against the Lion before him. The world closes in around him with every breath, each one coming lighter and easier. Even as his thoughts roam, distracted by memory. 

_. . .yet there the nightingale filled all the desert. . ._

“. . .and he accepted everything. Without him, I couldn’t be standing here now, asking for what I am asking of you now.”

When he steps back, Keith opens his eyes and levels his gaze on the Black Lion, his hand still pressed to its nose, beseeching. 

“I can’t bring Shiro home without Voltron. So, for just this little while, please. . .”

Light flickers to life above him, a pair of green eyes burning bright but brief in the darkness of the hangar. Keith exhales, relief bringing the smile back to his lips. With a parting pet, grateful, to the Black Lion's nose, he turns to face Red.

“So there you have it,” he laughs quietly as he walks over to where it sits. And like before he places his hand flat against it, letting his fingers drift light across its surface. Lets them trace down the scratches and divots, every small sacrifice ever made in battle.

“I’m not leaving you, but. . .” Keith’s smile falters, his voice tumbling to a murmur. “. . .I need him. Not as my leader or as the head of Voltron. . .I just need him, Red.”

The light flashes on in its eyes, holding steady unlike the Black Lion’s. He rubs his palm over its nose before stepping in and setting both hands flat upon it, before allowing his head to sink to its surface and his eyes to shut.

“You’ll have to take care of Lance. He’s a good guy despite all the stupidity he spouts, but he’s going to need your help. And I know Blue will look after Allura. . .so for just this little bit, bear with us, okay?”

As the room grows dark once again, Keith finds his heartbeat galloping and that the air tastes as clear as summer rain.

*

He doesn’t tend to do this. In the mirror, Keith studies his reflected self and re-imagines where the bruises had sat weeks ago, where his lip had been busted and the darkness had settled in just beneath his eyes. He sees nothing of it now, all traces of his fight against Haggar and the wraith Shiro had been wiped clean from his skin.

Every bit of it undone by time.

And he has so little of that now, not if he wants to bring Shiro back home. Keith reaches up and tugs on the hair at the back of his head. His mouth twists, the frown uncertain as it clings to the corners. He selects another piece, and without a second more given over to hesitation, he snips it away. 

He does this, again and again, the sharp shearing sound of the scissors causing something electric to pulse in his chest. It buzzes there, right against his heart, reminding Keith of the way the air would almost crackle before a storm. And as the basin of the sink turns dark, the back of his neck grows cooler and cooler still. Until there is nothing left to grasp there, only the brush of fingertips over skin putting a shiver to his spine. 

Keith sets the scissors aside, wipes down the sink, and walks out of the bathroom without another glance. 

It takes him only a few minutes to change, the routine of a Paladin suit no more than a secondhand thought by now. But when he walks into the hangar, something starts ricocheting around in his core and for several seconds Keith thinks he just might be sick. Everyone is staring at him: Allura with pride in her stance as she looks him over, Pidge simply nods with this tight little smile over her lips, Hunk gives him a thumbs up and Keith thinks he really might puke over the gesture. 

Lance though. . .Lance is looking at him with his brow knit together and something like an apology waiting to be said over his lips. Keith pulls himself up straighter, though his gaze doesn’t quite meet anyone at that moment.

“You look. . .good,” Lance finally says. “For now at least.”

Keith feels his lips pull tight, his hands crushing the helmet in his hands. 

“The red looked better though, but hey, at least I can make anything look good.”

The desire to vomit is all but obliterated, replaced by something more like irritation that Keith can’t quite let bloom. He exhales, long and slow. 

“It’s only temporary,” he mutters. 

Lance nods, like the plan had been his all along and the answers were there for the taking, like snatching a blackberry from the bush. “You’re going to bring him home, right?”

His gaze drops to the helmet in his hands, and he studies the familiar-unfamiliar lines that run across it, the black against the white. And he thinks of the orange-red glow of dawn and how it sits nestled right up against the weight of the night. Of how the stars can still burn in the sky even as the sun breaks along the horizon. 

Thinks of how close he is to everything he has ever called home. 

_Then keep moving, and don’t look back. . ._

**Author's Note:**

> I figured I would include a few notes for those not completely aware of the myth of Orpheus that may help explain some of the things in this, but first things first. When the idea was mentioned, the one thing I thought of after considering the myth itself was [ this piece of fanart](https://twitter.com/L_Strikes_art/status/823750460884426752) with this idea of 'Don't look back'. And from there the idea of this piece took shape. It's an amazing piece of work, please give it endless love because it stole my heart!
> 
> Now, as for the story:  
> \- Taenarus is often cited as one of the gateways into the Underworld and the place where Orpheus himself descended. It has also been described as a 'hellgate'.  
> \- Nightingales were said to have sung at the tomb of Orpheus after his death. They also have their own myth, which is quite violent, regarding Philomela, which plays into the poem Shiro is quoting in part one - 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot.  
> \- A viper (though potentially any venomous snake) was the cause of Eurydice's death, sending her into the Underworld. For some she is Orpheus's new bride or his bride to be, taken from him too soon and sending him to seek her out in the Underworld.  
> \- When Orpheus reaches the Underworld, he uses his gift of song to beseech the king and queen there to grant him the life of his beloved once more, and the beauty of his plea moves them both, as well as all of the underworld's denizens, and he is granted the right to take Eurydice back to the surface on the one condition that he does not look back at her until they are both there  
> \- As you can see, I did not write out an ending along the lines of Orpheus' story here because I would rather leave it up to you all to decide how you would like this tale to end, be it tragic as the myth or something more hopeful


End file.
